Coes Greenhouse News

by Dorothy MacFarlane, Staff Botanist

The orchids are in bloom! The bromeliads are in bloom! Venus’ flytraps will soon awake! It’s all action in the greenhouse for the next few weeks. The flytraps have been resting on the floor since last November, and by Valentines Day, they will start a new growth period. These plants will not thrive if they are not given a rest period. Once they are growing again, many of them will be made available for sale, some of them will be used in plant programs with children and the rest will stay in the greenhouse to delight our visitors.

A few garden plant seeds have already been started. They will be potted up to wait for planting earlier. It is too soon to start most seeds, unless you have very good light and can transplant the seedlings into bigger pots as they grow. Our garden growing season starts in mid-May, so count back five or six weeks from then to start seeds. That puts the correct time at mid-March. Seedlings started too early will get straggly and thin, and generally won’t do well when they are planted outside.

We have integrated a lot more plants into the Nature Center Preschool curriculum this year, including gardening and simple botany lessons. We will also be starting sunflowers and other seeds with children that they can take home and plant. Look in the newsletter for another spring session of Kinder Gardening for kids ages five and six. We want kids to know where plants come from, and how important they are. Gardening also gets kids outdoors into nature, something that is becoming harder to do these days.